Personification as the Way of Grammatical Gender Category Expression in Art Context

The study of grammatical categories in the artistic context from the position of anthropocentrism is a topical issue in modern linguistics. The greatest interest from the point of view of the relationship "language" "man" is the category of Russian language gender, which has great stylistic resources and can be motivated extra-linguistically. In this paper, the authors analyze personification as the way of gender grammatical category expression in the artistic context of Russian writer and poet works. In the article the authors consider the linguistic picture of the world, in the creation of which the embodiment is important, the semantic-grammatical properties of which are determined by the ambivalence of animacyinanimation category. Gender denotation occupies a special place in the interpretative structure of gender category, which presupposes a nominative significance of neutral gender nouns as a result of personification, stylization and the expression of symbolic meaning. Thus, extralinguistic possibilities of gender category are expanded, which are realized mainly in artistic speech. The authors of the article conclude that the grammatical personification of gender category as a vivid means of expression, expressiveness, imagery and emotionality is associated with a person's thinking, his worldview, psychological characteristics; and this judgment allows us to consider the category of gender not only as a morphological one, but also as a logical, mental category.


Introduction
Among the grammatical categories of a noun, the lexical-grammatical category of gender occupies a special place. Nouns related to any grammatical gender differ from each other by lexical-semantic features, word-building structure, the paradigm of declension and syntactic compatibility with other words. In the modern Russian language, the grammatical gender is viewed as a communicatively meaningful category, which is associated with its figurative, conceptual and value characteristics, as well as with its linguistic organization based on paradigmatic and syntagmatic links.
The most controversial and often debated are the issues about the definition of grammatical gender concept and its uniqueness. The category of gender is regarded as lexico-grammatical one and classifying, so it is difficult to attribute it to both the content (interpretative) and the formal (syntactic) category unconditionally. The ratio of generic entities that is not related to the semantics of gender is explained in different ways: 1) by the process of historical development leading to the displacement of one of the forms (крылец -крыльцо, проток -протока, облак -облако); 2) the style features (dial. полотенецm.g., colloq. ботинка -f.g., special метаморфоз -m.g.); 3) lexical-grammatical differentiation (жар в теле / в печи -жара (зной); 4) mismatch of gender and sex of a noun for expressive purposes ("Matyor couldn't imagine the island and the village without this larch ... It rose and was headed among of everything else, like a shepherd is headed among the sheep herd that spread out over the pastureland. It was like a shepherd carrying an ancient watchdog service" (Rasputin, 1980). In all these cases, the presence of variant forms of gender is the phenomenon presupposing linguistic redundancy. In special cases during stylization a writer can change the grammatical kind of a noun, if an image style has a basis for this.
In Russian language, the main means of gender category expression is, of course, the semantic one, which involves complex cognitive relations between gender and sex. British scientists Corbett and Fraser note that "the systems of gender always have a semantic core" (2000: 294). And this semantic information is culturally relevant: it reflects the way of reality conceptualization. Gender category observations show that two polar points of view can be presented among the many definitions of gender category: 1) gender reflects "real gender differences" (Peshkovskii, 1996); 2) the system of outdated dogma, the dogma of unconscious is observed in the category of gender (as in other categories of language)" (Sepir, 1993). According to the first theory, the grammatical gender is motivated extra-linguistically, which means that animism and anthropomorphism as the features of mythological thinking exist in the basis of grammatical gender.
From the point of anthropocentrism, a person realizes the world through the realization of himself, his theoretical and objective activity in it. This judgment has been studied in many scientific works (see: Alyokhina et al., 2016;Andramonova & Usmanova, 2014;Erofeeva & Sadrieva, 2016;Khabibullina et al., 2016;Murzina et al, 2016;Rakhimova & Yusupova, 2016;Safin et al., 2015Safin et al., , 2016Safonova & Zamaliutdinova, 2016;Yusupova, 2016). Thus, a linguistic picture of the world is developed, in the creation of which an important role is played by the personification whose semantic-grammatical properties are conditioned by the ambivalence of animation-inanimity category, which is manifested in the discrepancy of formally grammatically animated nouns with semantically animate and inanimate objects.

Materials and methods
It is known that gender has no nominative value among inanimate nouns. However, the nominative significance can sometimes appear in artistic texts. The grammatical embodiment of nouns means the personification of inanimate substantives -the "inspiration" of non-living objects, the "sexualization" of an anthropomorphized object endowed with male or female attributes (Bogatyreva, 2008). M.V. Laskova notes that "the all-pervasive nature of personification is one of the proofs, first of all, concerning the semantics (motivation) of gender, and, secondly, the connection of the grammatical gender with the cultural traditions of native speakers" (Laskova, 2001). So A.A. Potebnya wrote: "It is possible to judge whether gender has meaning only in those cases where a thought is provided with the opportunity to concentrate on it, that is, according to the works of poetry" (Potebnya, 1968). The observations by A.A. Potebnya show that the gender of nouns that call things and concepts is potentially connected to sex when it comes to personification in the works of art in which the names of objects are used to characterize characters. The contrast of male and female nouns, taken as the basis for impersonation, creates a vivid expression.
An image personification based on the stylistic use of nouns can serve different expressive purposes. During impersonation the objects receive an attribute of sex. It is possible to trace this within the framework of various contexts: in the works of oral folk art, in artistic speech, in poetry and in stable expressions. For example, in the fairy tale by Korney Chukovsky's "Moydodyr" nouns that do not have a nominative meaning acquire it after the transfer of signs characterizing animated objects: "The blanket fled, / the sheet flew off, / and the pillow, like a frog, / jumped away from me ...; Suddenly from my mother's bedroom, / a lamed one washstand / runs out / And it shakes with its head" (Chukovsky, 2017).
In our work, we consider the personification as the way to express the grammatical category of noun gender in an artistic context. Analyzing some works of poets and writers, we find that artistic images are created by personification, metaphorization and comparison. The expressiveness of works of art is achieved due to the transfer of features that characterize a certain group of words, to other groups of words that do not have these features.
The means of personification is analyzed as a special type of gender sign nomination. Personification, being the way of gender category expression, endows it with extralinguistic possibilities, which are realized primarily in artistic speech. For example, different interpretation of such time of year as winter seems to be very interesting in different works of Russian poets and writers: "Winter is still busy... it grumbles ... the witch is angry" (Tyutchev), "Bewitched by enchanting winter, the forest stands ..." (Tyutchev), "The winter-needlewoman has a lot to do again -/ Let nature get dressed more warmly. / The winter prepared a lot of yarn, / It knits white things tirelessly" (Yavetskaya), "Hello, winter guest! / We ask mercy / Sing the songs of the north / In the woods and steppes ..." (Nikitin), " Hello, Russian young girl, / Beautiful soul. / Snow-white swan, / Hello, mother-winter!" (Vyazemsky) (Poems about Winter, 2011).
The studies prove that the category of gender acquires an additional stylistic function, a semantic meaning and is motivated extralinguistically. During personification a language unit demonstrates the signs of imagery, semantic correlation, estimated and expressive saturation. The gender belonging of a word in artistic speech predetermines the character of an image. In such cases, most often the words of masculine gender represent the male characters, and the words of the feminine gender represent the female characters. However, in some works gender and sex may be different.
For example, in the story by L.S. Petrushevskaya "Alarm Clock" the main character Alarm clock decided to marry the Decanter with water, which was then married to a water tap (2017). In this case, we observe a gender-sex incompatibility. In the same story, the Alarm Clock makes an offer to glasses (this is the noun of the group pluralia tantum, which does not have the category of gender at all).
The principle of logical sequence in a noun gender determination is violated in modern social conditions, in particular, in advertising texts: "Black tea and green tea married lemons, and their brother married the peach." There is a paradoxical situation: first of all, inanimate nouns are cognized as animate; secondly, an inanimate noun acquires sexual characteristics: the tea-girl (the sister) and the tea -a young man (the brother), the lemon -the boy (the groom, the husband), the peach girl.
One should distinguish the personification of nouns of masculine and feminine gender and the personification of neutral gender nouns. The complexity of neutral gender noun personification is related to the choice of sex meaning and the relationship of this value with the gender of a personifying substantive.
Some works of art, built on the personification, have the nouns of neutral gender, who are personified and begin to denote the persons of male and female gender. "... It's hard for our brother, the wheel. All his life he has to shake on the road, and if he tries to take a breath, he will be pumped! ...; The blade fell in love with the Sun ... Of course, it was difficult for mutual feeling: the sun has so much on the ground that he won't see a tiny blade! And there will be a strange couple: a blade and the Sun!" (Krivin, 2017). In the above examples, the words of the neutral gender and sex will receive the value opposite to the value of a personified noun of the neutral gender.

Results
The analysis of the texts of different genres proves the complexity of the interpretation component concerning the category of gender, which determines the broad opportunities for the actualization of gender entities in different types of Russian speech. According to our observations, the denotation of gender category, which is defined as the class of all existing objects to which a word is correctly applied in the system of a given language or a semantic field that unites the various lexical-semantic groups of words, their paradigmatic series, has the greatest expressive and extralinguistic possibilities.

Conclusion
According to the researchers, the denotative component of grammatical gender of noun semantics is conditioned by an objective (extra-linguistic) reality. Thus, according to the researchers, the essence of the denotative component of the morphological category of gender determines two attributes of an object that reflect oppositions: 1) animate / inanimate and 2) male / female gender (only for the names of most individuals and some animals). And the essence of the denotative component is determined by the second opposition ("male-female"), but "is included in the work" only if there is a sign of "living" (Murzina & Hayrutdinova, 2015).
The table below demonstrates the characteristics of gender denotative meaning.

Summary
Thus, the grammatical embodiment of gender category as a vivid means of expression, expressiveness, imagery and emotionality is undoubtedly associated with the person's thinking, his outlook, psychological features, which allows him to consider the category of gender not only as morphological, but also as logical and mental one. The analysis of the category of the gender in the artistic context proves the fact that figurative anthropomorphism, based on the stylistic use of nouns of a certain kind, serves different expressive purposes, allows us to assimilate the national and cultural specifics of linguistic means. The incarnation of the category of gender in such cases performs an artistic-poetic, artistic-figurative function; it describes an object or its features; it expresses an evaluative or an emotive attitude of a subject to a designated element; it represents an object as an existing one in some artistically built world; it testifies to a more emotional attitude to nature and to the surrounding world.